Maritim Hotels’ director of international sales Mark Spivey talks to BBT about what the hotel chain offers corporate travel buyers
What are the unique selling points of Maritim Hotels?
We started in 1969 with our first hotel in Germany on the Baltic coast near Lubeck and named it Maritim after its seaside location. We are still a family-owned company with 37 hotels in Germany plus another 15 in destinations such as Mauritius, China, Egypt, Spain, Turkey, Latvia and Malta. Our big selling point in Germany is that we have major conference centres onsite at our hotels – we are known in Germany for having large conference facilities in the big cities such as Berlin, Dusseldorf, Bonn, Stuttgart and Cologne. We also have conference facilities at our properties in secondary German cities such as Nuremburg, Dresden and Bremen. We do a lot of conference business – it represents around 30 per cent of our total revenue.
How much corporate business do you do with UK companies?
We get quite a lot of business from corporates in the UK – particularly to the German financial centres of Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Dusseldorf. There are also centres around Germany for different industries such as Hanover for car components, breweries in Bremen, oil companies in Hamburg, Cologne for food processing while Nuremburg is a toy centre. We also get business from the Ministry of Defence because of the army bases.
You already have some hotels in the Far East – will this be a continued area of expansion?
We have two properties in China but they are in the north-west province rather than in Beijing or Shanghai. The Shenyang area is home to the new BMW car plant in Asia and Lufthansa has just started flying there. We think there will be more development in China but it is more likely to be in secondary cities. We will also be upgrading and refurbishing our existing properties around the world.
How important is business travel to Maritim?
Business travel is our biggest market with around 35 per cent of our revenue. It’s mostly the large corporates who are coming into the big German cities. While most of our properties outside Germany are leisure-orientated properties, we get some business travel to Mauritius – the island is the third biggest textile producer in the world and there’s also the sugar cane industry with companies such as Tate & Lyle.
How does an independent hotel company compete against the major chains?
I think we are a bit of an unknown brand in the UK market. But once companies start going into Berlin, Frankfurt, Dusseldorf and other German cities, they soon realise who we are. Our standard rooms are, in most cases, larger and better equipped than our competitors – for example, in Frankfurt our standard sized rooms are 30 square metres. We are also known for the high quality our breakfasts which sets us apart.
What kind of distribution do you offer for travel buyers?
We are distributed through all the GDSs and corporates have their own rates with us through their TMCs. For small corporates, we have our small company rate agreement - this guarantees that they automatically get the best available rate and a 5 per cent discount. We are interested in working with small companies where they are only spending up to £50,000 a year on travel. We also have a corporate app which allows clients to see if we have any rooms available as it gives instant availability and pricing.
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